Brokeback Mountainexpanded to 69 screens (heh, heh) and
moved into 8th place this weekend, earning as much as $70,000 per screen in gay-friendly (not to mention,
cowboy-friendly) cities such as Los Angeles, but still acquitting itself more than adequately in conservative markets
such as Phoenix ($50.000/screen). Looking at these numbers, Focus is willing to gamble that they can sell this thing
far beyond the gay/girl market; they'll expand to 100 screens ahead of schedule next week.
Deborah Young watches
Albert Brooks' latest, Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World. "With a
plethora of good lines and absurd situations, Brooks can afford to play smart and straight as a self-deprecating
detective in search of comedy", she writes. "A more serious puzzle is what the
film, which was shot in India, has to do with the Muslim world."
It looks like Warner Brothers is about to lose its status
as Wal-Mart's DVD "category captain". What the hell does that mean, you say? It's a practice, apparently
employed by many large retailers, in order to obtain "exhaustive number crunching" that can then help them
determine marketing, pricing, placement, etc, and the captain in turn "enjoys a unique
relationship with the retailer that can be exploited if the studio suggests a strategy that is part of a favorable
agenda for that studio." It's unsure why Wal-Mart would drop WB at this time – they're currently the leader
in DVD market share – but it's thought that Fox, who is currently captain at Wal-competitor Target, is in line to
take Warners' place.